It's time to kick off NaNoWriMo 2023. One month, 50k words—an average of about 1700 per day. At the end? A first draft of a new novel. Simple.
Right.
Life will always nudge its way into the path of creativity. Just like with every other important thing, I must carve out time to meet my goals. My greatest motivation is that I've completed this challenge the past three years in a row. That sense of accomplishment, of knowing I just wrote what could be a future published novel, is worth every sacrifice.
At the end of this NaNo challenge, I aim to have nine complete novels under my author belt.
Making a cover mockup for Pencil Pricks as part of Inktober (which I also completed my goal of one ink drawing every day) helped inspire me to kick off the NaNo challenge yesterday. How did I do? I managed to surpass my daily word goal by over 100 words once I reached the end of the first chapter.
I want to remind my fellow authors to dwell here for a minute.
That's progress. Those are words I hadn't written the day before. I pulled them out of my head and put them on paper. Well, in this case, in digital form. But even if I don't write anything else for the challenge, I started. I wrote around 1800 words that didn't exist.
Wow.
So often in life, only our polished projects—our completed goals—are celebrated. What about the effort that goes into smaller amounts of progress? What about practice? For a creative person, labelling a piece "finished" creates stifling pressure. It's so final and needs to make an impact. Cue anxiety.
"Finished" caries definitions like "publishable", "salable", and "worthy." Too often, the unfinished pieces of creativity are viewed as rubbish or a mark of laziness. As a perfectionist who constantly struggles to see the worth in my own creations, I'm trying to revel in the progress. I want to get so comfortable with my journey that I can rest in "unfinished." I'm praying more, inviting God into the progress I want to make, and letting things unfold.
It's difficult, but it takes the pressure off.
For NaNo, there will be days I go far beyond my daily word count and days I fall short. My actual goal is to write something each day, make tiny deposits toward a finished project—a project that will need far more work during the future editing process. I need to be okay with the flaws in the first draft. That's difficult for me.
But today, I've done it again. I've already written about 400 words toward my daily goal, and it's not even lunch time. That's 400 more than I had yesterday. That's progress. Baby steps.
For those who have, currently are, or want to participate in NaNoWriMo in the future, congratulations. Even considering the challenge is a big step toward a possible creative goal—a new story only you can tell. It's intimidating to begin, but I encourage you to try. Just developing an idea is an accomplishment.
Keep on smilin'!
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